NSS Report: A Built & Dressed Booth!

Okay, so my report of the National Stationery Show majorly stalled. But I blame my 2 year old son, who came home with the nastiest stomach bug and proceeded to infect the whole household, dog included, with it. But I'm back, barely. And I showed you our NSS booth setup, here it, finally, the booth, all set up.

Before the show, my friend Carl and I adhered all the vinyl decals (not an easy task), and at the show, Candie and I adhered the acrylic logo. GAWD I'm still aflutter about how great Joie Studio's logo looks:

The card wall:

And Candie and me, taken by our good friends at Fugu Fugu Press:

Less than 2 months before the show...AACK!

Hello beautiful. Chris sent me more booth progress pics - I really love how the color is coming out. On the left is the final color, on the right is primer only. I have to admit, the primer only color is kinda Barbie. And I mean that in a good way. But I digress.

I believe I leave in 6 weeks for the show, and my whole timeline has been shot to hell but that's okay because somehow it always works out. Some progress points besides the walls -

• Booth flooring is here and is fabulous.
• The wedding catalog is designed and ready to go to the printers and the last of my gift products is being produced. The product catalog is awaiting photos of the last of the new gift products to be photographed.
  
• My wedding invitation binders, which are being custom made by my bookbinder friend, is near completion.
• I have the paper and have ordered the plates for my Stationery Show mailer. I've also in my nonexistent spare time compiled a list of about 300 retailers that will be receiving the mailing. If you have a shop in your area that you think might be a good fit for Joie Studio, please let me know!
• I cannot believe I am about to say this but the 2012 calendar is all designed and will be ready for the National Stationery Show.
  
• Booth graphics have been ordered. The guy doing the custom vinyl and acrylic sign work for me has assured me that he will show me how to apply the decals once they are done cutting.
  
• Shipping the crate has been arranged.

It's a lot of moving parts but so long as everything is moving forward, I'm feeling decent about my progress. It's also given me a chance to take a hard look at my process and has changed the way I produce my ready-made greetings line.

But the progress isn't without sacrifice. For those of you who are here on my blog because you are thinking of showing at NSS one day, here are the concessions I've had to make:

• In January, I cut my baby greetings and custom line out for 2011 because there was just too much going on already and I wanted to focus on the designs that I already had. They will be ready for debut in 2012 instead, leaving me more energy to focus on my wedding and greetings line.
  
• In January, my year and a half old baby had to switch from daycare part-time to daycare full-time. In March, he went from normal hours to extended hours at the daycare.
• My house is filthy because I don't have time to clean it.
• I need to bring in a second printer to help me complete all the projects in time for my clients and for the National Stationery Show.
• I have had to outsource die cutting because I don't have the time to set one of my presses up for die cutting right now.
• I was going to letterpress print the cover of each of the catalogs but that's not looking like it's going to happen anymore.
• I haven't slept more than 5 hours on any given night since January.

Progress is good and I'm seeing the light at the end of the tunnel! Yay! More soon.

My, those walls are...uhm...

My friend Chris is building the booth walls for me for the National Stationery Show and he sent me this photo to share the progress he made after he primed the walls. I got excited, though everyone I've shown the pic to has second guessed the color.

"Doesn't it look awfully...magenta?"

It's because I had the paint store tint the primer. Years ago, we painted my kitchen a beautiful brick red. And it took something ridiculous like TEN coats to get the kitchen red and not pink. My good friend always blamed it on the fact that we didn't get tinted primer (Home Depot was certain that we didn't need tinted primer even though every single HGTV show insisted that when painting a dark color you need to start with a tinted primer), and so this time, since I want such a deep color for the booth walls, I insisted (and I had to INSIST) that they tint the primer to help along the painting. I also bought the paint with primer in it, in hopes that that particular formulation will help coverage. Let's hope that helps cut down the number of coats.

Anyhow, in case you are wondering, the walls are hinged wood panels to make it easier to ship. And Chris is easy to work with if you ever want him to build your booth walls for you. This should also make it easy for me to transport them and use them at Unique LA if I want.